From the 5K iMac to the MacBook Pro
The end of the Steve Jobs era and the beginning of something even bigger
WHEN STEVE JOBS died in 2011, many pundits said it was the end of Apple: in the popular imagination, Steve Jobs was Apple and Apple was Steve Jobs. Who could fill such iconic shoes? Tim Cook? But Apple’s logistics wizard is not a man you should underestimate, and under his watch Apple became a trillion–dollar company in 2018. It was Cook who turned Jobs’ ideas — the iPhone, the iPad, and projects begun during the Jobs era such as the Apple Watch — into globe–conquering successes.
But the question that dogged Apple from the day of his succession was simple: what would happen when Jobs’ ideas ran out? Those questions got louder when design guru Jonathan Ive left Apple in 2019, apparently frustrated by Apple’s move to a less design–focused company.
Today and tomorrow
But Jony Ive’s tenure wasn’t without its mistakes. The hockey–puck Magic Mouse is one of his, as was the terrible "butterfly" keyboard and Touch Bar of the MacBook Pro. And the focus on style sometimes triumphed substance, such as the lack of ports or lack of battery life on the Intel MacBook Pro.
Today’s Apple is putting the ports back into Macs and focuses more on practical products like the Mac Studio than attention– grabbing but compromised machines like Darth Vader’s trash can, the Ive–era Mac Pro. And crucially, today’s Apple makes its own silicon; no longer do Macs have to wait for PowerPCs to improve or Intel Cores to get more efficient.
Has some of the Mac magic gone? Maybe: it’s hard to get too excited about the outside of the M3 Mac, which power aside is largely indistinguishable from its predecessor. But more than ever before, Apple’s control not just of the computer, its operating system and the actual engine means it can deliver ever more incredible and powerful computers that deliver on the ultimate Apple promise: It Just Works.